Kudos to Mr. Ben Bleikamp for digging this one up. As quoted in a recent Lantern article about Radiohead:
According to WordPress.com, a leading global market research company, reported that in 2006, “legal digital music downloading was the fastest growing digital music category.”
Does that mean that nobody in the copy editing chain as EVER heard of blogging?
This week I am wrapping up my first week of classes in what will (hopefully) be my final year at college.
I have been through enough classes to know, what makes or breaks a class more than anything else is the professor. I have had professors who yell, prattle on, make off color comments, offer to buy the class beers and some that were just another student. This semester my professors run the gambit, and I was looking forward to a terrible class when I signed up for Art History.
But I was wrong. The professor (we’ll call him Dr. Smith) is on top of his game and knows how to engage a room full of young adults. Dr. Smith, not being so old himself, knows that Art History is looked upon as unnecessary memorization that many students will forget. He could have packed it in with boring powerpoint presentations and that would have been that.
Instead Dr. Smith engages the class w
ill a no bullshit style of teaching. He moves quickly, tells you only what you need to know and moves on. He occasionally throws in a joke or interesting historical antidote (like this urinal that the Philadelphia Meusem of Art purchased for millions).
For me, it drew a lot of parallels to what is keeping young people away from the media. It has nothing to do with the technology or Facebook or MySpace, but it has everything to do with the content. Young people don’t want to be bullshitted: and thats why The Daily Show is popular. Young people want only the facts so they can move on: thats why the internet is king for news. Young people also like a tiny dose of comedy or entertainment: again the Daily Show and think of what SportsCenter does for sports. But most of all, young people want news that doesn’t come off as the mouthpiece for the establishment, but from someone who is honest and smart at the same time. If some old codger had stood up and gave me facts in a line item fashion I could assume that he could care less whether I take his class. But Dr. Smith was passionate, he made sure his passion came across to all of the normally apathetic students. He structured the class in such a way that if you even left for the bathroom for 5 minutes you would miss a lot. Unfortunately, I can say that if I didn’t read my newspaper, or check most Web sites today I would be just fine.
If an Art History professor can keep heads up and cell phones off, than I’m sure the media can do the same for young people. Creating profiles on Facebook or adding comments won’t do anything to attract a new audience. Make the readers trust you and feel like they can never miss a day and they will come. And who knows? They may even be younger than 25.
I just wrapped up my summer internship. Overall, I’d say the classic cliches about internships: learned a lot about myself and the industry. I also learned a lot about how to get things done due to the nature of my particular situation (I had to create a site). Therefore, I had to jump to various departments and ask/demand that certain things get done with varying degrees of success.
There was also an aspect of non-journalism related work such as coding, researching, and marketing that I didn’t ever imagine I’d have to do.
But here are a few tips I would give anybody going into their first newspaper internship:
5a. For the love of god, stay out of office gossip.
(thanks to Joe for the above link.)
According to news ’round the Web, Google is to allow comments by people involved in a given story.
Granted, I can’t see how the process of verification is going to be smooth, but it might be an interesting experiment in my theory that transparency spurs discussion and restores faith in the media.
In fact since I had the idea first I will demand necessary compensation.
One point of contention among journalists is the value of comments on news stories. There are various downsides:
1. They’re just nasty
I have noticed that on many stories at The News Journal, the comments are often racist, unintelligent, and downright mean on most occasions. Some would say having an thought provoking discussion around the news is complimentary to the function a newspaper. But most examples say otherwise.
2. You reap what you sow.
My Google-fu has failed me, but someone once wrote that the nature of your comments reflect your content. For example a site like 43 folders that is geared around helping people will generally have helpful comments. News, by nature, is mostly negative. Perhaps this reflects the people that respond. Also, I tend to believe that the people that read news for the “right reasons” are the ones who use it to apply to their everyday life, not to debate some guy on an internet forum.
3. The penny-arcade theory
4. The comment curve
I would argue that, on most sites, someone is more likely to comment if they are mad than if they are pleased. The same can be said for most customer service situations.
So what do we do to fix this situation?
1. Transparency
One underused aspect of user comments is transparency. I don’t understand why news outlets don’t encourage their reporters and writers to respond to comments on a story they wrote. Here, papers have what is essentially free advice and most are letting it go to waste. Let the reporter get involved and help restore trust in a section of media that many believe lost its credibility .
2. Foster discussion
In a “discussion” atmosphere, there really are no positive and negative comments. Every comment would avance the topic being discussed. Another benefit of having staff comment on stories is it helps foster intelligent discussion. Soon, most of the negative users will either leave or change their tune. Another way to foster discussion is to build a user base around another aspect of the site such as a niche product or a forum and let that bleed over into other areas.
These are just passing observations. If you can poke holes in any of them, drop a comment. But a big part of me believes transparency is the key to unlocking the true potential of comments.
Sean Blanda is a journalist / entrepreneur living in Philly. Read more